doodle wrote:
I absolutely love the way that Thomas Paine tears into the Bible. The only modern day author that I have seen and read that could compare is Christopher Hitchens.
doodle,
Perhaps this will be of benefit to you; I hope and pray so.
I'll call it:
Living With a Clear Conscience
Althought Christian spirituality has to do with a way of life, it is not just another religious philosophy of life that helps us to understand our place in God's world, nor is it just a religious code of behavior that maps out how best to live the spiritual life hear on earth. Spirituality's main focus is not on how to think or feel or act religiously, but on how to live, like St. Paul, with a good clear consicience before god and the people around us. The basic premise of spirituality is that, for better or worse, the state of our conscience colors our experience of God. St. Paul sums it up well in Titus 1:15-16
"To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works. The are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work."
Let me explain what Paul is getting at. How we receive God and respond to His Word depends on the state of our conscience. Take a mirror: if it is stained, or if its surface is uneven, it does not receive and accurately reflect what is in front of it - the cleaner the mirror, the clearer its reception and reflection of the light. Our conscience is like that mirror. If it is stained, it does not receive and reflect the light of God; if it is clear, it is filled with the light that enlightens it and gives it insight. By itself our conscience seems to have little or nothing to do with God. It operates as a kind of internal court of law in which we play all the roles; we sit in the judge's seat and stand as the person on trial; we act as the counsel for the prosecution and as the counsel for our own defense. The problem with our conscience is that while it functions as a kind of internal judge, it does not, by itself, provide any certain criteria by which we can rightly assess ourslves and others. Our conscience is like a compass without a magnetic pole. The results of its self-appraisal will differ according to the criteria it uses. These criteria may be the views of our parents or our friends, the norms of society, or the pressure of fashion, or the philosophy of our life. All these skew the operation of consciences. We may use these criteria to excuse and affirm ourselves, but that sense of self-justification is short-lived. We end up with an uneasy conscience. No matter how hard we try to do the right thing, no matter what criteria we use to evaluate ourselves, we feel that we have failed, that we are not who we should be and who we should like to be. Worst of all, from bitter experience we discover that our conscience is often deluded and clouded by self-interest; our conscience is tainted by our guilt, shame, self-righteousness, and our anger. These distort perception and judgment; they leave us in the dark about ourselves.
The Word of God enlightens our conscience. God gave us our conscience so that we would know where we stand with Him. He designed it so that we could attend to His Word and discern His will as revealed in His Word. Our conscience operates as it shoud only when it is fully attentive to His Word both as Law and as Gospel; it operates properly only when it has been cleansed from the stain of sin.
God's Law as it is summed up in the Ten Commandments diagnoses the state of our conscience. The Law identifies God as the Judge; it clears away the fog of neurotic and misplaced guilt. Once we attend to it, things become clearer for us; we discover the truth about ourselves with respect to God and with respect to those around us. Yet that relief is short-lived, for we soon discover that we cannot get rid of our guilt simply by doing the right thing and keeping the big Ten. In his Law we realize how completely we are contaminated by both our own sins and the sins that have been committed against us. And that makes for a bad consicience before God. A bad conscience darkens our souls like nothing else on earth. Nothing is worse, spiritually, than the confusion that it brings. It affects our experience of God and life as a whole. When we have a bad conscience, we see Him as a strict lawgiver and a harsh judge, a moral watchdog and a moral decective, someone out to get us. His disapproval of our sin, His anger against injustice, is experienced as His personal disapproval and rejection of us as people. We resent His demands. We fear His condemnation. He seems to act as if He were our enemy. And so we work hard at getting God off our backs. Failing that, we try to avoid Him by minimizing our contact with Him and anything to do with Him.
The cloud that comes from God's accusation and condemnation affects our whole behavior. We cover up our shortcomings and trumpet our achievements before others. Our friends are those who affirm us, while our enemies are those who criticize us. Life becomes an ongoing exercise in self-promotion and self-justification before others. Most of all, we are afraid - afraid of rejection by people and by God, afraid of death and confrontation with God the Judge in the final judgement.
Our conscience, however, is only partly enlightened by the Law that diagnoses our spiritual impurity; it is fully enlightened by the gospel that cleanses us from that impurity, the Good News that we are justified by the grace of God the Father through faith in His belived Son, Jesus. He offered Himself as a sacrifice for us and for our sin; it alone gives us a clear consicience before God the Father. There is a close connection between faith and a good conscience. Through faith in Christ we receive a good conscience. We no longer fear God's disapproval and displeasure. So, just as through faith in Christ we have a good conscience, a good conscience gives us access to the mystery of faith in Christ. Our conscience functions properly only when it is governed by faith in God's Word and when it attends both to the voice of the Law and the voice of the Gospel.
The key to life in the presence of God the Father is a good conscience that comes from the Holy Spirit through the conviction of sin and the assurance of salvation. That, in turn, leads to mental enlightenment by the Spirit, so that we learn to see ourselves and others as God does. A good conscience also leads to emotional healing by the Spirit, so that we learn to see ourselves as God does. When we have a good conscience, our puzzling journey through life, with all its twist and turns, its troubles and its joys, begins to make sense.
[credit for much of these thoughts to John Kleinig in
Grace Upon Grace]
Blessings,
... Mountaineer
Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help. Psalm 146:3
